Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns EAA Witness feeding issue question?????

On Saturday my wife found a nice EAA witness in 45acp compact that she really liked so we bought it for her. Later that we went to the range and shot it with some handloads that I loaded I used a load that works very well in my Iver johnson full size 1911 I knocked the load back .5 grains and the gun shot very well as far as accuracy and grouping but about once in every 8 shots it would not close the slide the whole way when feeding the next shot. The slide would be about 1/8 to 3/16 of an inch from being forward the whole way. Now this evening I after cleaning and oiling everything I went out and shot it again but with full power loads from my 1911 and now it does it every time between shots if take the palm of your hand and lightly smack the rear of the slide it closes the whole way. Question is what to do to remedy this problem????? change springs or something else??

I would first do the obvious, try factory. Dont be so over confident in your loads that you wont consider the possibility.

If its not that, then my bet would be too much extractor tension. You can check that by pressing on the back of the extractor when the gun jams. If it goes into battery, that's your problem.

Other issues could be the chamber or an improper radius on the bottom of the extractor.

Kevin, thank you for the advice I will try some factory ammo first. When I can find some locally it has been kind of tough lately, about the only thing I can get around here is 9mm or 380. Thats why i started with hand loads. If it is the extractor what do I do to fix that?

I had a similar issue I cured by carefully hand polishing the barrel feed ramp and throat area with 800 grit wet dry sand paper and careful cleaning to remove minor tool marks, that smoothed op the feeding far more than the minor work done would at first have looked like it might have done, it changed the pistol from mostly to almost totally reliable with decent ammo
you might want to try that as its a 30 minute and $2 investment that might cure your problem, or look at these videos and use a dremel with a felt polish ball and jewelers rouge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yahzMTOO34

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfye--eO9xg

If that's the issue, then I really recommend you send it back, or to a qualified gunsmith. Curing the problem can be as easy as filing a little radius at the bottom of the extractor and then stoning it smooth. Or it may require re-setting the extractor tension, which involves peening a small spot on the extractor where it bears up against the slide. Or it can entail re-filing and re-shaping of the whole extractor hook. Just depends on how bad the problem is.

This sometimes happens with external extractors. They're made to where there is little to no fitting required...but every now and then, a slide will be cut just a thousandth deeper where the extractor sets, and that will upset the whole apple-cart. They typically catch this at the factory, but sometimes it's so subtle that it goes unnoticed. In fact, I fixed a Glock 19 with precisely this problem on Sunday. His was off a good deal, required me peening the extractor on the inside, and then re-filing to re-set the extractor tension to the correct tension.

It's an easy fix, but it's one of those things that requires you to take it apart, do some fitting, check, take it apart again...

Weird that I am, I actually enjoy that kind of work.

Update on the EAA witness, I tried some factory ammo (federal) and I still had had the same problem but not nearly as often as with my reloads. I had a friend's dad who tinkers with that kind of stuff look at it. He filed a little on the extractor and stoned it smooth. I was able to run about 30 rounds of my reloads through it since then and only had one time that it acted up. The one time it acted up it did the same thing as before, fired about half the mag and then upon feeding the next round the slide just didn't quite close all the way. But it wasn't open as far as when it did it before.
As a small side note the longer we have it the more both my wife and I love it. I would highly consider buying another one.